pc firewall freeware Question

[san]

Zero-Knowledge Freedom came with my new HP running XP. I don't like it and plan to download Sygate freeware for a test drive. Should I uninstall Freedom or just disable? Thnaks for your comments.

[Baddog]

If you are not happy with it you might as well, might want to try "Zone Alarm Too".

[Paco103]

I have to agree with Baddog. I have used both firewalls, and while I'm sure Sygate will do quite well at protecting your system, it is a lot more difficult to setup, especially if you're not used to the systems. ZoneAlarm is what I run, and if you don't think you need a firewall. . . I'm on dialup and it still catches over 100 connection attempts on somedays. Most are just from harmless systems but I have gotten several suspicious attempts. It's also very simple, and I have no problems letting the things I *WANT* to get around it do so. Even running a gaming server or something, once I tell ZA to let the program run, it won't have a lot of proxy config problems like Sygate had (maybe they've made it better in new versions too, I don't know!)
And I would suggest uninstalling the other if you don't want it. Firewalls like to automatically enable themselves (that's what they're supposed to do) and if you don't like it then it's just eating up space anyways.

[BJUK]

I would go with Zone Alarm Its free for personal use and very well rated, also easey to use.:t

[san]

Thanks. I do need firewall. I have AT&T broadband. I tried Zone once before and for some unknown reason it "failed" on me. Basically it shut itself down. The AT&T rep said this has been known to happen with attbi & za. Although we could not pin it on za, it locked me off the internet by preventing anything to get out. Boy was I glad that XP has the fairly easy method to back date settings. I went back before za and all is well. By the way, SysOpt did a comparison and concluded Sysgate best overall.